


You Think I Don't Notice You?

by katmarajade



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adorable, Best Friends, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hogwarts, Misunderstandings, Ravenclaw, Romance, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katmarajade/pseuds/katmarajade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose makes an effort to get her best friend to notice her. Little does she know that he's been noticing everything about her all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Think I Don't Notice You?

It was quite difficult having a best friend who had his head in the clouds and never noticed a darn thing. It was even worse when you were in love with him. Rose Weasley could attest to that. Lorcan was clever, bright, kind, and warm-hearted. He laughed at her jokes (at least when he was paying attention). He was a competent lab partner in Potions, and he was brilliant at patiently explaining the more complex Arithmancy equations with which she often struggled. He could make her day better with one tiny smile and he didn't even realise that she was a woman. Well, almost a woman at any rate. She wondered if he cared about her at all or if she was just a decent Potions partner and an acceptable library mate.

The insecurities were only fed by her boorish cousin James, who was too observant for his own good. He loved to tease her about her hair, her teeth, her gangly body that she was nowhere near growing into yet, and especially about her infatuation with the daydreaming blond Adonis of Ravenclaw Tower.

One day, determined to make him notice once and for all, Rose spent three hours taming her ridiculous bushy hair and putting on her prettiest outfit—the blue shirt her Mum had brought back from Paris and jeans that were actually long enough for her legs. Her cousin Lily loaned her some eye make up and Rose thought she'd managed rather well for her first go at it.

As she walked down to meet Lorcan in the Common Room, her heart skipped, hopped, and jumped in anticipation. Lorcan turned, saw her, paused, blinked, and said, "Was it twelve inches for Charms or fourteen?"

Rose's leaping heart plummeted and she collapsed into the chair across from him, slamming her books down with slightly more force than necessary. Blinking back tears, she whispered, "twelve." Then she opened her Charms text.

Lorcan apparently didn't notice her distress and they worked silently for more than twenty minutes before Rose reached her breaking point.

"Do you notice _anything_?" she hissed, grief, frustration, and confusion drowning out her reason.

"What do you mean," he asked carefully.

"I mean ... me! Do you even notice me."

"You're sitting right here. Of course I noticed you. Is this about your hair? I thought James had pulled a prank on you and messed it up again. You get so upset about that sort of thing so I didn't want to bring it up."

"My hair? No! I spent more than an hour on this!"

Eyebrows lost in his blond fringe, Lorcan mumbled, "Oh, um, it's ... nice."

"I just don't understand how we can sit here together and in classes every day and talk about so many things and be such good friends and you don't even know the first thing about me!" Rose's voice was becoming shrill and she tried to keep from shrieking or bursting into tears—she really wasn't sure which was more likely.

"You think I don't notice you? That I know nothing about you?" Lorcan's eyebrows were now squished together as his forehead crumpled with a baffled, sad look. "Rose, there's no one I notice more than you. I know when James has been tormenting you again, I know that you pretend not to smile every time you see your little brother finally making friends in Gryffindor. I know that you hate crying in public and that I shouldn't point it out when it happens, which is more than you'd like. I know that you love milk chocolate but find dark too bitter. I know you hate coffee and tea, but you insist on drinking them anyway both in an effort to stunt your own growth and not to upset your tea-crazy grandmothers.

"I know that you secretly read romance novels but keep them hidden. I know you have a soft spot for animals and wish desperately that your Mum would let you get a cat, even though you're horribly allergic. I know that you have completely different laughs depending on the situation—if something caught you by surprise, if you're only being polite, if it's family or someone you love, and if you're really tired and start giggling hysterically at nothing. I know you get really cranky when you don't eat, which is why I make sure to schedule our homework around meals and bribe the kitchens into letting me keep snacks on hand for emergencies.

"I know that you think your hair is pure chaos and that you're too tall and all awkward or something, but I don't think you're able to see the big picture. You're beautiful. Always were, even as a bucktoothed little girl with more hair than head. You trip and stumble and it's all quite endearing, because I know you and I see what your dull-witted cousin and those horrid girls in the year above us don't see: that you're going to be more gorgeous than all of them combined."

"Are you saying I'm the ugly duckling?" Rose smiled weakly, amazed at what he'd said, unsure what exactly it meant, and trying desperately not to get her hopes up.

"That would mean you were ugly now, and we both know that's not true. Besides, I'm certainly not in love with you because you're pretty. I fell in love with the way you light up with the most enormous smile at the little things, and the way you kick my butt at Wizards' Chess. Your complete inability to lie convincingly and your open heart and how you comfort the homesick little ones and then pretend it never happened. And how you do ridiculous dances when you get excited and how seriously you take your studies, even the completely pointless lessons. I fell in love with you before I even noticed how beautiful you are. Like you said, maybe I'm just not that observant."

"You ... but ... why didn't you say anything?"

"I just did."

"Prat," she said softly, feeling the flush rise up on her pale cheeks.

"Possibly," he agreed, reaching out to squeeze her hand and sending tiny shocks of electricity through her arm at the contact. Then he pulled back and went back to his notes. She gaped for a moment, wondering what had just gone wrong.

"Hey!" she said, poking him.

"What?" His huge light blue eyes seared into her, rendering her momentarily incoherent.

"I just ... you said all those things and then went back to your homework like it was nothing or something."

"Well, you didn't say anything back, so I figured that was its own answer. I'm absolutely capable of staying friends like this, Rose. I've managed just fine for years. You needn't worry."

"But I just assumed you knew! Everyone knows that I'm in love with you. They tease me constantly because I'm always mooning after you and you just keep going on, all perfect and beautiful and brilliant and oblivious. I mean, you've heard James teasing me—sometimes right in front of you!"

"James would say anything to rile you up. I take everything he says with a grain of salt. More like a tablespoon. And you never said anything yourself, so I just figured you were embarrassed by the accusations."

"Well, I was embarrassed! Because they were true! I was sitting there pining over my best friend and ... it turns out he was pining after me too. I don't mean you were pining exactly, I just ..." Rose tried to back track, worried that he'd take her words the wrong way.

"Nah, it's true."

"So, um, really?" Rose looked up at him, all her hopes and dreams resting on this one breathtaking precipice of a moment.

"Absolutely true. I love you, Rose." Then he smiled that slow, easy, lazy-looking smile that made her stomach flip and her heart race.

"I love you too, Lorcan," she whispered.

"Good."


End file.
